Biophotonics - Applications

Applications

Biophotonics can be used to study biological materials or materials with properties similar to biological material, i.e., scattering material, on a microscopic or macroscopic scale. On the microscopic scale common applications include microscopy and optical coherence tomography. On the macroscopic scale, the light is diffuse and applications commonly deal with diffuse optical imaging and tomography (DOI and DOT).

In microscopy, the development and refinement of the confocal microscope, the fluorescence microscope, and the total internal reflection fluorescence microscope all belong to the field of biophotonics.

The specimens that are imaged with microscopic techniques can also be manipulated by optical tweezers and laser micro-scalpels, which are further applications in the field of biophotonics.

DOT is a method used to reconstruct an internal anomaly inside a scattering material. The method is non invasive and only requires the data collected at the boundaries. The typical procedure involves scanning a sample with a light source while collecting light that exits the boundaries. The collected light is then matched with a model, for example, the diffusion model, giving an optimization problem.